


Cultivation

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4625355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt (knbprompts @ tumblr): Furihata is a florist; Ogiwara is his latest customer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cultivation

**Author's Note:**

> filled the second prompt HERE: http://knbprompts.tumblr.com/post/127230475311/ogifuri-prompts

It’s just another slow day at the flower shop; Fukuda is in the back arranging pre-ordered baskets and bouquets and Kawahara is out on delivery and Furihata’s left manning the front desk. Furihata likes working here; his coworkers are nice guys and the pay is good but sometimes when no one calls or comes in for a few hours he gets awfully sleepy here among the plants, and it feels like he’s one of them, just about to fold his leaves. The tinkle of the bell on the door rouses Furihata from his drowsiness a little, and the appearance of the person who walks in makes any lingering fatigue disappear.

For lack of a better word, this potential customer is handsome. He’s got broad shoulders and a broad smile; he’s on the tall side and his arms are well-muscled; his hair is messy but it frames his face just so and even in the shadows of the plants and the ceiling, his eyes are bright.

“How may I help you?” Furihata says (really half-squeaks).

“Hi,” he says. “I’d like to place an order for next week and get a bouquet today, if I might?”

“Sure,” says Furihata. “Can I have your name and information for the order?”

“Ogiwara Shigehiro,” he says with a grin. “Can I have yours?”

“Furihata. Furihata Kouki—oh, but your information!”

Ogiwara grins and shrugs. “You know mine; I want to know yours. It’s only fair.”

Furihata just slides the index card across the counter along with the pen, trying to duck his face away until his blush subsides even a little bit.

“I’ll get you a catalog,” says Furihata.

When he returns, Ogiwara’s finished filling out his information and when he meets Furihata’s eyes Furihata feels his face start to heat up all over again. He plops the catalog down in front of Ogiwara, and almost cringes at how loud and awkward it sounds.

“Um, who are you buying these for?”

Ogiwara flips through the catalog. “The one next week is for my aunt’s birthday. And my mom just got a promotion, so I thought I’d congratulate her with a bouquet.”

Furihata nods. “That’s very nice of you.”

Ogiwara shrugs. “My mom’s done so much for us, and she’s worked so hard to support us that a bouquet is the least I can do.”

He looks up and meets Furihata’s smile with his own. “Anyway, I’ve made my choice; should I write it down on the card?”

Furihata nods again. “That would be great. And the bouquet?”

“What would you recommend?”

“A mixed bouquet from these flowers,” he says, waving his hand at the wall on his right, “Is our most popular option. You could also get roses, lilies, or carnations alone—”

“What’s your favorite flower?” Ogiwara interrupts.

Furihata stutters for a second before regaining his voice. “Uh, daffodils.”

“Okay,” says Ogiwara, and he grins. “I’ll take some of those, then. Plus whatever you think would look good mixed in.”

* * *

 

Ogiwara shows up an hour before he said he’d come; when the bell on the door rings Furihata’s about to tell himself to calm down because there’s no way it’s him, except it is and oh, fuck, Furihata’s not prepared. He seems to have gotten even more attractive in the last week, and he’s wearing athletic shorts that do a lot to show off how well-muscled his legs are and Furihata feels himself blushing already.

“Hey, Furi—can I call you that?”

Furihata nods, perhaps a bit too eagerly. This is doing nothing to help his overblown feelings from a harmless maybe-flirtation.

“You’re an hour early, so I’m afraid your bouquet isn’t ready yet…Fukuda-kun should be finished with it soon.”

Ogiwara seems totally unperturbed. “Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it was now or then, but I don’t mind waiting a while.”

“You must really care about your aunt,” says Furihata. “It’s quite a bouquet you ordered.”

“Yeah, well,” says Ogiwara. “It’s from me and both of my younger brothers—the youngest is in middle school, so he doesn’t have much to spare so we all pooled our money for this.”

Furihata smiles—it’s something he and his older brother did a few times for relatives and family friends when they were younger, and he can definitely see Ogiwara as that kind of older sibling.

“My youngest brother actually wanted to buy her basketball tickets,” Ogiwara says.

“Really?” says Furihata. “What’s her team?”

“She doesn’t really like basketball, but he does. I don’t know; it’s kind of—I feel like he’s trying to like it because I like it, which is nice as an older brother, you know, but I want him to be his own person and figure out what he likes on his own, you know? I don’t know. I mean, I’m not bothered by playing with him or teaching him, but…”

Ogiwara leans on the counter.

“Um…” Furihata says.

Ogiwara looks up, eyes brightening. “Yeah?”

“I think it’s fine. He looks up to you, you know, and…when I was around that age, I wanted to read a lot of the books my older brother read so I could have something to talk about with him, and I wasn’t really interested in fantasy at first other than that, but then I got really into it myself…and now we don’t really read the same kinds of fantasy books at all, but it’s still something that we can share. I mean, it’s not as if it’s his only interest, you know? Er—at least, that’s just my opinion.”

He flushes; it’s longer than he’d been planning to speak and perhaps a little too self-involved, but Ogiwara’s leaning forward and staring intently at him.

“Wow. I never really thought about it that way. But that’s a really cool way of putting it, you know?”

Furihata feels his face burning hotter.

“Actually, he likes books, too—do you know any about basketball that you’d recommend? I mean, there’s not so much overlap with fantasy—”

“Hey!” Fukuda pokes his head out from the back room. “You’re Ogiwara-san, right? Your bouquet is ready.”

Furihata would really like to lock Fukuda in the back room right now, but it’s already too late.

“Great,” says Ogiwara, and as he reaches over to grab it from Fukuda’s hand his thumb brushes across Furihata’s arm.

“You paid already, right?” says Fukuda.

Ogiwara nods.

“All right; that’s it,” says Fukuda before he disappears into the back again (and before Furihata can really get a word in edgewise).

“So, I guess I’ll see you around?” says Ogiwara.

“Yeah,” says Furihata.

And then he’s gone.

* * *

 

Furihata pores over all of his basketball books; even if he knows which ones are good it’s still nice to have an excuse to reread his favorites, even if Ogiwara probably won’t come back for a while (all of his female relatives can’t have been born in May) if at all—if he had even been serious about his conversation. Furihata tries to assume that Ogiwara’s forgotten all about him by now, but he still makes a note of which books are appropriate for middle-schoolers and which really aren’t. And when he’s not reading, he’s thinking about Ogiwara’s smile, those big hands (what do they look like palming a basketball? How would they feel against Furihata’s bare thighs?) and the sound of his voice. His visits have been like a UV lamp shining down on Furihata if Furihata were a small, thirsty flower—he tells himself it’s just a fleeting fantasy, but it’s hard to stay grounded anyway.

And then Ogiwara shows up again, a little more than two weeks after his last visit. His smile’s still cheery and bright and Furihata can’t help but smile back as he approaches the counter.

“Ogiwara-kun, Hello.”

“Furi! Hey.”

“What can I do for you?”

Ogiwara’s face is close; his eyes are practically sparking under the low lamp. “I’d like a dozen daffodils, please.”

Furihata lifts up the divider and lets himself out. Ogiwara trails him over to the daffodils and watches as he picks the twelve best of the lot and ties them all together.

“What’s the occasion this time?” says Furihata.

Ogiwara’s cheeks blotch an amaryllis-like magenta, and Furihata’s stomach sinks. There must be a special girl he’s after, maybe one who comes to all of his basketball games and cheers him on and makes him honey-lemons.

“It’s okay,” says Furihata. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No,” says Ogiwara, scratching his head. “It’s just…it’s for you.”

“I’m sorry?” says Furihata.

(This must be his ears playing tricks on him, two and a half weeks of built-up hope culminating in something improbable—closer to impossible than that.)

“Because daffodils are your favorite, and I wanted to ask you to come with me to the bookstore café around the corner—and I was going to wait until after I’d paid so I could give them to you, you know.”

His smile is a little bit nervous now, and Furihata can feel himself trembling.

“Me?” he squeaks.

“You,” says Ogiwara, confidence kicking into his voice. “You see anyone else around here who likes daffodils? And who I like spending time with?”

Furihata feels as if he’s about to drop the flowers. He tries to nod, but it comes off more like a funny sort of spasm and Ogiwara cocks his head.

“Are you okay? You can say no if you want.”

“No! I mean…yes, I want to go with you!”

Ogiwara grins full-out, and grabs Furihata’s hand. Ogiwara’s fits around his like a mitten, warm and secure, and Furihata suspects that even if he’d reminded Ogiwara that his hands were covered in dirt he wouldn’t care. So he smiles back.


End file.
